


Alphabet Soup

by SoberFrost



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, BAMF Artemis, Black Canary is awesome, Character Death, Character Development, Conner is awesome, Fluff, Growth, Kaldur actually gets some love, Lian Harper is adorable, Mourning, Self Confidence, Time Travel Complications, Young Justice Season 3, Zatanna is coming for you Nabu, batfam angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25255906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoberFrost/pseuds/SoberFrost
Summary: The letters of the alphabet (A-Z) through the lenses of various Young Justice characters. Ten chapters, ten different characters.
Relationships: Artemis Crock/Wally West, Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson, Kaldur'ahm/Tula, Kon-El | Conner Kent/M'gann M'orzz, Lian Harper & Jade Nguyen, Roy Harper/Jade Nguyen
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	1. A - C (Barbara)

**Author's Note:**

> A random idea that popped into my head while I had writers block for a different story I'm wrapping up. I originally wanted to do this for only one character but it spanned into this. Crossposted over from fanfiction.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own my ideas, but not Young Justice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starting off with some love for Oracle, because the Batgirl-to-Oracle arc would have been great to see in the show.

**A is for Acceptance**

There were a lot of things that Barbara Gordon had to accept.

She had to find room for acceptance of her mother's absence in her life. Of her father's responsibility to the city, at a cost to his ability to spend time with his daughter even when she needed him. Of the giant target that being Police Commissioner put on his back, but also hers.

Then there was acceptance of the risks that came with The Life. Acceptance of the loss that it brought with it: Not just the physical friends who perished, but the loss of your innocence when you saw death, torture, and other unspeakable horrors so many times. Of parts of your morality, when you made decisions you thought you'd never have to make. The loss of trust in yourself if you ever caught yourself slipping over the line. The loss of trust in your mentors or comrades when you saw them consumed by the darkness you sought to fight.

Acceptance that she was bound to a wheelchair now, grounded for the rest of her life, had taken longer to come than she would have liked to admit. But it allowed her to move on. To become better, smarter, and more independent than she would have ever been able to imagine.

Acceptance that she was in love, even if it scared her more than any villain ever did. Acceptance that she couldn't make the man she loved leave this life no matter what. Nor was she sure she could make herself leave it.

Acceptance that without the sacrifices made by her or her friends, the world would be in worse shape.

**B is for Bandage**

When she was little, sometimes she would bandage her father when he came back from a rough case. It made her feel like she had some control over the dangers he faced. That he would have to come back home safely because she would be there waiting to bandage him.

She kept up the habit when he became Commissioner, even though the nights when he got injured started to become fewer and far between, thankfully. As she became older, wiser, and more mature, she tried to bandage the injuries on her father that weren't physical: The mental and emotional scars that his job took on him.

She could never quite cover those wounds.

She bandaged more than enough injuries on Dick when she started being Batgirl, and ok, fine, a lot of that time was being used for flirtatious banter. But she still did a much better job bandaging his wounds than he did hers, probably because he spent too much time giving her that stupid sloppy smile. Nowadays she found herself bandaging Tim, often scolding him for his injuries in a way that reminded her a little too much of Alfred.

God she _wishes_ she could still bandage Jason.

She would trade sarcastic remarks with him, ultimately smacking him upside the head when he inevitably made a comment about her legs. The wound his death left was one that no bandage could ever help heal. Not for her, for Dick, and especially not for Bruce.

At the end of the day, Barbara couldn't help but feel that her friends thought of bandages as a stop-gap solution to injuries that often served as minor inconveniences. Speed bumps in the road to completing The Mission.

For her, bandages were a warning sign. Red flags that shouldn't be ignored.

**C is for comfort.**

Her father had always been there to comfort her, even if he wasn't always sure how. He was still usually the best at doing it. Dick comforted her, even when they were going through the awkward phases of figuring out what exactly their more-than-a-friendship-but-not-a-romance relationship was. Hell, she was gently surprised to discover that Alfred was devilishly good at comforting her. Sometimes even Bette comforted her.

But these days comfort was fleeting.

There was no comfort when she woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, panting as if she just ran a marathon, with the Joker's face burned into her retinas and his laugh echoing in her ears. If Dick was there, he would whisper smooth nothings into her ear and hold her tight, until she remembered that she was alive, and she was ok, and the bastard couldn't touch her.

Comfort escaped her when she would watch the video footage of Nightwing or Robin or any of the other heroes swing from building to building, free as kites, while she was confined to a wheelchair cage. Comfort escaped her when she would pinch her legs, and feel nothing, even as she saw her skin turn red.

Comfort came and went in various forms. Sometimes it arrived in the form of a nice day out with the girls, when she could hang with Raquel Megan and Zatanna and pretend that everything was ok and they lived normal lives. Other-times it came in the form of an easy, successful mission. One where she had coordinated everything from her apartment and watched the members of the team complete the objective, secure the object, capture the bad-guys, whatever, like a well oiled machine. No complications, no unnecessary risks, and no chaos.

The problem with comfort was that every time it came, it always left. With it came the the implicit threat that it would never return.

That was the reason why Barbara Gordon became Oracle. Because Oracle was all-knowing, and all-seeing.

As Oracle, she could make her own comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a kudos/comment. :)


	2. D (Jade)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter basically to make myself cry.

**D is for Desperation**

It haunted her more nights than she would ever admit. It wasn't a foreign feeling to her. She'd felt it too many times as a child, but never imagined that it would come back so strongly in her adult years.

Before, desperation never really felt like desperation to her. She was always able to turn it into fuel for something else: Fuel for the conviction to escape her father at all costs, even if it meant leaving her sister behind. Fuel to rise through the ranks of The Shadows, knowing that it was kill or be killed. Fuel to

The first time she truly felt desperate was when she had finally realized that Roy was a lost cause, a broken man in search of a ghost that he would probably never catch. She had been on her knees in their decrepit apartment of the month, his disheveled face in her hands, _begging_ him to please abandon the search. To eat food other than whatever instant-cook crap she knew how to cook. To actually shower and shave and to _live_ his life.

"Do it for me," she had begged, hoping to break him out of his stupor, and she hated herself for it, because _she_ didn't beg. Ever.

He refused, and when she went to bed that night she couldn't even believe she was still there. Still trying to save a man who didn't even think he was a man, let alone one worth saving.

That night she felt the claws of desperation deep in her chest for the second time, not because she hadn't gotten through to him – a part of her knew that he was lost cause – but because she couldn't bring herself to leave him. She was in love with him, hell she had _married_ him, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could watch him tear himself down.

A week later she found out she was pregnant, and she left with only a note on the dresser. She had found a different person to look after. Where most women in her position would have fallen into despair, the news gave her a renewed purpose.

Even when she thought Artemis died, the despair hadn't led to desperation, but rather a steely resolve to avenge her death.

Desperation was an emotion that she was most used to seeing on the faces of her adversaries, or her victims. The desperate looks of panic as she hunted her prey, toying with them before the kill. The rabid, panicked movements as they tried to escape capture or death. She never did enjoy the pleading look in their eyes, unlike more her more sadistic contemporaries like Black Spider or Deathstroke.

Or her father.

She took some comfort in knowing that those eyes all too often belonged to some insidious bastard that, despite pleading for mercy now, likely never dispensed it when the roles were switched. That was one plus about working on the side of the devil: Contrary to popular belief, the bad guys tended to spend most of their time taking out other bad guys, not good guys.

She knew that desperation was a sign of weakness. That weakness, that desire for a "normal" life, is what lulled her into a sense of security and allowed her to retire when she still had enemies walking the earth.

Desperation is what made her leave her daughter, entrusting her safety and innocence to her husband and her sister. That night, when she kissed Lian in her crib and left with only a note for her husband, she felt like she was carving a piece of herself out and setting it on fire.

Desperation is what made her watch that same child from a distance, trying to will her love onto her beautiful frame from afar. Hoping to brighten the darkness of her life by watching the literal light of her existence prosper.

But desperation was an emotion that only Jade could feel. Could be haunted by. When she put on the Cheshire mask, there was no desperation, only a will to survive. Cheshire didn't have fears, or weaknesses, nor could she be intimidated or leveraged in any way. With no loyalties to The Shadows, Cheshire had no master either. Answered to no one. Was accountable to nothing. Cheshire protected Jade because Jade was weak.

And so she decided, if she was going to survive, then there could be no Jade.

Now, there was only Cheshire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a kudos/comment :)


	3. E - F (Bart)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically what my brain threw up imagining the time travel mechanics of Bart Allen's entire existence in Young Justice.

**E is for Exhilarating**

When he was a little kid, he used to search up word definitions so he could become better at arguing. He found exhilarating one day. It was defined as "making one feel very happy, animated, or elated; thrilling." It was a perfect description of what his powers made him feel like.

There was something about breaking the sound barrier in your sneakers that got his pulse racing like nothing else. His hair whipped back in permanent whiplash, the world around him all but frozen. It was thrilling: Exhilarating at the highest level.

He couldn't really explain it to anyone aside from the speedsters.

He guessed that Shazam probably knew some approximation of the feeling, and Superman as well, but for them super speed was just moving from point A to point B extra conveniently. As a speedster, when he ran, he wasn't just moving fast. The speed itself coursed through his veins when he moved.

It was fitting that his first superhero name had been Impulse, because that was exactly what he listened to when he first experienced the exhilaration of that level of speed.

Both his father and Wally had warned him about when they trained. They told him about stories of when they ran so fast it felt like their particles were going to dissolve into the air around them. Cautioned him that as he grew stronger and faster, he would need to learn the upper limits of what was safe and controllable.

He disagreed. It was only after he stopped trying to control his speed and gave into the sensation did he feel the highest of highs. The first time it happened it blew his mind, the sheer thrill of it. The power. For a split second, the thought did flicker into his mind that he was about to run through existence itself.

It never did feel right watching that exact thing happen to Wally in this timeline. He had to remind himself that it wasn't the speed, but The Reach that had done him in. He couldn't help but wonder if Wally would have survived if he had been more at one with the thrill, instead of trying to reign it in.

The exhilaration made him confident, almost absurdly so, that he would always be fast enough. He knew he would always be able to kick in that extra gear when he needed. He never said it out-loud, but he knew that he stood out even amongst the speedsters. Unlike Wally or Barry, he was born with the speed, and moving at his highest speeds always thrilled him in a way nothing could. Unlike his parents, he had learned to use it to its fullest limits from his youngest years of childhood.

Unlike any of them, he was never, _ever_ scared by the speed. Of what it made him feel.

It called to him, and he listened, every single time.

**F is for Failsafe**

He was the failsafe, sent from the future to avert a horrible, post apocalyptic world. A world where his grandfather had died long before he ever even came into existence. Where his family and friends would slowly fall to The Reach, who would either execute them or worse: Put them on mode and have them hunt down those that loved them.

By the time he was old enough to properly use his powers, most of the heroes he now fought alongside were already dead. He'd been back long enough to forget, but every once in a while he'd remember. Certain things or conversations would take him back.

Sometimes when he saw Will playing with Lian, he'd remember the story of Roy Harper dying avenging the murder of his daughter. Of how Cheshire had killed herself in the ensuing grief. He never knew about there being three Harper brothers. He definitely didn't know if Cheshire would come home in this timeline.

Other times, he would overhear Superboy and Nightwing speaking in hushed tones about his lack of aging, and their stalled research on finding out what it mean for his future. He'd remember when he found Superboy's body in his time, alive in name only and chained to the wall of some Reach cell. The Reach had put him on Mode, and when they were done using him to hunt down and kill his friends, they had decided to punish him for all the trouble he caused beforehand. Somehow they exploited the error in his Cadmus genetics that caused him not to age. They'd spent years killing him slowly, painfully. Making an example out of him, the true last son of krypton (after what they did to Superman).

Bart didn't know if there was a solution to Superboy's aging, so he never said anything.

Every time he saw the Robin hologram in the Watchtower, it disturbed him to his core. He'd heard whispers that a fallen Robin had come back from the dead, but they always seemed more lore than truth. In his timeline, the original Batman had been long dead and Gotham long destroyed. Not many people left to speak about ghost tales, not when you were trying to crash the mode. But tales of a hero rising from the dead tended to stick around, especially when so many heroes were dying.

Whenever he saw Nightwing give the current Robin a pat of assurance, or hear them ribbing each other jokingly, he remembered hearing vaguely of a bloody battle for the cowl that followed Batman's death. There was no way Tim & Dick could do that to each other. Not in this timeline, right?

It was stressful enough thinking about the horrible things that he had likely averted from happening. He tried not to think about how his actions altered the future for the worse either.

Sure, he saved Barry, but Wally died. His dad would grow up with his father, but he would be deprived of a good friend, and Bart himself was down a mentor. Speaking of his father, would he even still meet his mother? Would Bart Allen be conceived in this world? What would that mean for him? What about all the villains who had become good, forced to unite against The Reach? How many of those reformed villains were only reformed because of the cataclysmic events of an alien invasion, and how many just needed a chance at redemption?

_It doesn't matter_ he told himself, because he saved himself and he saved the world from being on mode.

The longer he stayed in this new timeline, the fuzzier things became about his own world. Details started to slip from his memory, and with them his ability to alter the timeline, which he was silently grateful for.

He knew this was a one way ticket when he punched it, because it – _he_ – was the ultimate failsafe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this was supposed to be a happy-ish "Bart saved the world" drabble but then it became this giant angst-pool of feels. Well, oops.  
> Leave a Kudos/Comment.


	4. G - I (Kaldur)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaldur is underrepresented in the YJ fanfic lore. Also writing prompts for him was much easier than I thought it would be, once I had his letters picked out.

**G is for Grandeur**

He grew up in the grandeur of Atlantis.

The beautiful marble columns that adorned the buildings that were at one with the sea-floor flora. The colorful life of the sea that weaved in and out of Atlantis, in harmony with everyone around it. The magic, both imagined and literal, that seemed to flow through the very molecules of water surrounding everything.

When he was trained to fight, it was with a grim, efficient accuracy, and done with the understanding that he would soon have to fight for that which he loved and stood for. And yet, he was trained at the grand military academy. He studied, however briefly, under the tutelage of the greatest magical minds in the sea, and arguably truly the world.

When he first put on the Aquaman uniform and looked at himself in the mirror, he felt his eyes could barely comprehend the grandeur of it all. The gold that raced across the shoulder and down the arms, contrasting starkly with deep orange of the rest of the uniform. The crest of Atlantis at the center of the waist, letting all those who saw it know for whom he stood for.

Logically, Kaldur was a man of simplicity. But in his heart?

Well, he could never resist a bit of grandeur.

**H is for Honor**

For an Atlantean, honor was almost everything. It was woven into the society's fabric, and considered worth living, dying, and killing over.

It was his great honor to serve as Aqualad at the side of his King, mastering the tools of the trade and learning how to conduct himself among titans of good and evil. It was an even greater honor to serve as Aquaman when his King stepped down, entrusting him with to be a loyal ambassador for Atlantis with his every move. It was an honor to serve as the leader of The Team and co-Chair of the Justice League. It was a special honor to bring down his father and save the world, even if it came at the cost of lying to those he loved and ultimately, the lives of one of his best friends in Wally West.

In doing so, he had also honored Tula, who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. It was what drove him when he sat in his father's submarine, pondering how many more days of lies he could take.

It had been his greatest honor to make a new family with those on the surface world. Dick, Wally, Artemis, Raquel, Conner, Megan, Zatanna, they had become his family over the years they spent together and countless battles they had fought. He had fought, bled, healed, celebrated, prospered, loved alongside them. Watched them mature and grow in the face of many obstacles. He thought of them of the sisters and brothers he never had. For Kaldur, who was raised by parents who were not biologically his, it hadn't been hard to accept a family that quite literally spanned multiple species, ages, languages, and personalities.

Indeed, being part of that family most certainly had been been his greatest honor.

**I is for Independence**

He used to think Independence came with being a leader. He didn't believe that in an egotistical way, but a logical one. Calling the shots gave you a level of freedom, despite the great responsibility, that you could never achieve in the background as a soldier. Still, he'd shied away from the role until it had been thrust on him with The Team. He was shy at first, uncertain of his role, but once he grew into it he'd embraced it with both hands, staking a claim to the independence it came with.

He couldn't have guessed how wrong he would be.

He felt guilty to admit it, but the responsibility of leadership had built up on his shoulders over the years. It had become suffocating, always having to think three steps ahead of the enemy not just for your sake but for the sake of those under you. To send your friends and comrades into battles you knew may take their lives, sometimes without even appraising them of all the factors in play.

After the Justice League had managed to expose Lex Luthor and Black Lighting took over the leadership role, Kaldur had actually taken a breath of relief. For the first time in years, he was no longer burdened with leadership, and he felt true independence. In the coming weeks he went into battles with a fluidity and clearness of mind that had eluded him. He still approached his duties with the same seriousness and dedication as before, but he slept easier knowing that he had not had to be involved in the conversations preceding mission deployments. That if something went horribly wrong, he wouldn't be questioning why he had sent _that_ team on a certain mission, or how the strategy could have been tweaked to avoid catastrophe.

A small part of him knew that it was selfish, punting the responsibility elsewhere. But Black Lighting had a vision, and the ideals to bring it to fruition. He would have to make the difficult decisions needed to make those ideals a reality. As for Dick, Kaldur knew his friend needed to take the burden of leadership, and allow the responsibility to ground him. It would ground him. Prevent him from losing his way.

As for Kaldur...well, he was always more comfortable as the soldier, not the general.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kaldur is a G. Leave a comment/kudos and warm my heart :)


	5. J - L (Conner)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conner, Kon-El, Superboy, The Big Little Supes, Mr. Miss Martian, and apparently the only member of the team who learned anything in Season 3 from the previous two seasons of "let's lie to our teammates and keep secrets until they inevitably blow up in our face." Figured he deserved a chapter.

**J is for Jellyfish**

Conner always thought jellyfish were weird. I mean, how could anyone look at a jellyfish and think anything otherwise? They were transparent blobs that sometimes glowed in the dark. They had no brains but were still carnivorous, which meant they hunted their food. There were mostly water, so they all but dissolved if they somehow got on dry land. They didn't make sense.

Kind of like him.

His Cadmus training taught him about them, just like other organisms. He knew that Jellyfish were considered by humans to be the oldest multicellular organisms on the planet, though that was known to be false by Cadmus.

Just like how he was supposed to be Superman, but he wasn't.

He knew that Jellyfish had a second name – Medusa – on top of their scientific names. Their name was based off the evil Greek Mythological creature Medusa, the one that Cadmus taught him had indeed existed and had been vanquished by the Amazons during a bloody battle on Themyscira.

He had three names too: Conner, his human name. Kon El, the Kryptonian name that Kal-El, a.k.a Clark Kent, had given him. And Superboy, his hero name.

Like him Jellyfish had also been into space, having gone on the Space Shuttle Columbia in the early 1990s. He found it humorous to think that the Jellyfish had been struggled to readjust to gravity when they returned to earth. It was something that he struggled with too.

Jellyfish could reproduce asexually too, which meant that some of them were clones, just like him.

Given how much he had in common with these blobs of living mass, he was pretty amazed that it took so long for him to see one in person, at the Happy Harbor Aquarium. Something about watching the blob-creatures caged inside what was basically a tiny swimming pool set him off, and he may or may not have almost punched right through the glass. Later he realized that watching them confined to the aquarium pool reminded him too much of being stuck in a Cadmus pod.

The first jellyfish he saw outside of an aquarium was during a trip with Kaldur to Atlantis. From his extensive Cadmus knowledge he recognized it immediate as a lion's mane jellyfish, scientific name _Cyanea capillata_. The creature was huge, bigger than him and Kaldur put together, but majestic in it's own way.

"I'm like a jellyfish," he blurted out, staring at the giant creature gyrating by him.

"Pardon?" Kaldur had asked, a look of befuddlement on his face.

For a brief second, he almost gave a play-by-play explanation of everything that he and jellyfish had in common: The names, genetic makeup, and general aversion to space.

Instead, he just cracked a smile and said "They're cool. I'm cool too."

**K is for Krypton**

Krypton was his home, even though it wasn't. He never grew up on the planet, had never seen it, and his creation hadn't even been a thought in the mind of a child Lex Luthor when it was destroyed. No one knew much of anything about it, beyond its destruction and the fact that it had a Red Son. If they had, Cadmus would have implanted it into his mind when he was in still a pod but the truth was that the planet Krypton was a relic, fading into the obscure annals of lost history.

Or at least he thought.

One day Clark told him that they carried a piece of Krypton with them everywhere in their blood.

"Krypton is destroyed, but it lives on in us."

It his first day at the the Fortress of Solitude and after the introductory tour, he had been shown the inner sanctum of the Fortress. There lay the ship that had brought Clark to earth, giving the Earth Superman and saving the Kryptonian race from total annihilation. As it turns out, it also brought with it a treasure trove of information about Krypton. For hours, Conner pored over hundreds of pictures, articles, and encyclopedic entries about Krypton. Krypton was destroyed, but right there in front of him lay its entire history.

"Why is this locked up? The world should know about this, about our home planet."

"I know, and I'm trying to think of a way to do that positively. There are those out there who could use this information against us. People like Lex Luthor."

"You don't need to remind me."

"Listen Kon, Krypton goes where we go. I've come to think of Krypton not as a planet, but as where home is. For me that's both Metropolis with Lois and in Smallville with my parents."

Conner pondered this for a moment before he spoke. "I guess my Krypton is Mount Justice then."

Clark smiled. "Krypton is not lost, not unless we lose ourselves."

When Mount Justice blew up, he had been angry. It hurt to watch another Krypton, his own, destroyed so needlessly, and by a former ally of his who knew how much it meant to him. He was doubly enraged later when he found out the truth about Artemis and Kaldur and their Nightwing conceived deception. Bats and their destructive drive to complete _The Mission_ at all cost. He hated it.

For a hot minute he moved to Smallville. It was great, homely, welcoming even. He loved his surrogate parents, enjoyed the clean country air, and Clark stopped by frequently. He felt good helping around the house and the farm and the local people were some of the nicest souls he'd ever met. Yet, it wasn't the same. It wasn't his Krpyton, not quite.

Eventually, he found it right back in Happy Harbor when he and Megan moved in together. A year later, when he realized his home would be wherever they were, as long as they were together, he asked her to marry him.

One day he was going to teach their kids about Krypton, what it used to be, and what it could be for them.

**L is for Love**

Love replaced anger as his biggest driving force years ago.

When he was freed from Cadmus, anger was the emotion that overrode all the others. Anger fueled all of his fights, on and off the court. Even when he learned to control his temper, and to start opening up to his teammates, that too was fueled by anger: An anger at Cadmus and Lex Luthor for thinking that they could turn him into a mindless machine.

Everyone assumed Megan was the first person who taught him love, but he wasn't sure that was true. He did love her, but in the beginning of their relationship he knew he didn't truly understand what love was.

The first time he knew he understood love was when the first time he had dinner at the Kent's farmhouse. Clark, no Kal-El, had finally opened up to him and the two had a heart-to-heart talk after The Light had almost taken over the Justice League. It was a conversation that came months too late but still felt sweeter than he could have imagined, especially when he was invited to the farmhouse in smallville.

He'd been apprehensive about how the elder Kents would feel about taking him in. That night, in between the most delicious blueberry pie he'd ever had and the heartwarming smiles and roaring laughter, he realized he had a family that loved him, and that he could safely love back without any conditions. He didn't know how long the two elder Kents had known of his existence, but they'd only just met him and they made sure he knew that he was welcomed, no matter what.

He and Kal-El had their issues to work out, and he still wasn't sure whether these were his grandparents or parents or whatever, but that would come with time.

With time he realized that not only did he love Megan, but he loved his whole team as if they were family too. He loved Kaldur, despite or maybe because of that fact that he never seemed to be fazed. He loved Dick, even when he was clearly running away from his leadership duties, and he loved Raquel despite all her spontaneity. Black Canary he loved like an Aunt, for being there for him even before his own brother could acknowledge his existence. He loved Wally and Artemis, especially when they left the Team to go live their own life. When Wally died his love for him didn't go away, but some of it was transferred to Artemis, because she needed it and Wally would have wanted him to give it.

He appreciated the newer members of the team, the younger kids like Bart, Cassie, Jaime, and Violet, but they weren't quite at that level. Now that he was part of The Outsiders, he figured that might change too.

Yes, sometimes love could hurt more than anger ever did, but it also made him stronger than anger ever could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yea I kind of stole the "Superman ship with history of Krypton" thing from the Death of Superman animated DC movie. I don't remember ever seeing the Fortress of Solitude on Young Justice. 
> 
> Leave your thoughts below!


	6. M - N (Lian)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lian Harper is a kid and does kid things. Mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't intending to do Lian Harper, but she was specifically requested by someone and I like to think I more or less did a good job of writing for a child. This is post-season 3 to hopefully make it not sound too advanced for her age.

**M is for Mouse**

Mouse was short for Aunty 'Mouse, her favorite girl in the world.

It was also short for mouse, and her favorite cartoon character was Jerry, the mouse from Tom & Jerry. She wasn't sure why she liked the show so much except that there was something very funny to her about all the violence. Aunty Mouse tried to change the channel whenever she said it was "getting too much" but Lian learned how to change it back when she put the remote down or got distracted by her phone. Aunty Mouse didn't thing violence was funny, which was weird because she was always fighting the bad guys and laughing about it with daddy and Uncle Dick.

When she asked Daddy why Tom & Jerry didn't get along, he told her that they were actually best friends.

"Tom is only chasing Jerry because they have the world's best game of tag. They aren't actually trying to hurt each other. The dog is even in on it."

"They're not hurting each other?"

"No, they've always got each other's back. Whenever one of them is about to get hurt for real, the other one always saves him."

For some reason, that made the show less interesting to her. What was the point of chasing each other all day if they weren't ever going to hurt each other? It seemed like a lot of work for a game of tag, but she thought maybe this was something that would make sense when she was a Big Kid.

But Aunty Mouse had her back no matter what, even if that meant arguing with Daddy that she should get ice cream even when she keeps making a mess with it. Plus, whenever Lian was about to get hurt, she saved her or helped her feel better afterwards. And whenever Aunty Mouse was on a mission, Lian was protecting her from the bad guys at home. Aunty Mouse told her that herself.

So yea, that was the Jerry to her Tom.

**N is for Nutella**

Why did Nutella exist? Lian wasn't sure, but she suspected it might be some creation of one of the bad guys because it was too good.

She guessed that it was probably the best thing that existed in the world. Actually second best, right behind her Daddy, because he was the one who went to the store and got Nutella for the house. Or maybe third best because Aunty Mouse was also great and sometimes helped her make Nutella sandwiches.

Either way, Nutella was pretty awesome and it bothered her that other people either didn't understand this or tried to hide it.

Lois didn't understand, because anytime they had playdates at her house she would always make a face if Lian asked for Nutella sandwich. She gave her turkey sandwiches instead. Yuck. Uncle Kaldur was also like that, a Nutella denier! Unlike Lois, he wouldn't stop Lian from eating Nutella but he always started at the bottle like he wanted to cut it in half and burn it to ask like in Tom & Jerry. Uncle Kaldur also liked to change the channel when she started laughing too hard about Tom & Jerry, but he was the most fun to play with at the beach so Lian could forgive him for that.

Daddy was one of the people who understood that Nutella was great, but tried to hide it from her. She didn't understand why he would hide it whenever they had it in the house because he obviously loved it and would put extra Nutella on their sandwiches whenever he was serving. When he was done though, he put it high in the cabinets, where he thought she wouldn't notice or be able to get to it without him.

But Lian was smart and she was...what was the word Grandma Paula kept using? Innovative!

She was innovative, and she managed to get into it one day. She moved one of the chairs, and then climbed it, and then managed to use the big cooking spoon (spatula) to get to the Nutella. Then, she managed to pull it down, except she also dragged the bag of sugar down with it, and it spilled all over Lian and the chair and the kitchen and everything else around and it may have gotten into the Nutella too.

That was when Lian discovered that a spoon of Nutella plus brown sugar was somehow even better than normal Nutella. When Grandma Paula found her, she started laughing so hard that it made Lian start laughing. Then Grandma started laughing even harder, and she kept saying she would "fall out of her wheelchair."

When Aunty Mouse found them a few minutes later, she did not think it was so funny.

Later, when she was talking a bath and still licking bits of Nutella off her fingers, she thought about her list again.

Nutella was definitely number 1.


	7. O - P (Roy Harper/Arsenal)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually had a lot of fun writing Roy's prompts!

**O is for Omelet**

Roy Harper was really freakin good at making omelets. It was the only food he had learned to consistently make before…well before he woke up in a hospital staring at a version of himself that was 8 years older. For whatever reason he had retained that skill, eight years and minus one arm later.

He never gave it a second thought until the Team started to notice his skill. It was Dinah's fault really. She'd been the only one he maintained constant communications with after he woke up. He'd been too angry at Oliver, too weirded out by Will & Jim, and just too distant from the other proteges that he had never gotten to know. After Nightwing kicked him off The Team, he had little interest in reaching out and building those connections.

So Dinah had been the first person to eat one of his omelets. She'd been visiting his new apartment – they'd made him 18, legally, since he was technically 21 when he woke up even though he was still also 13 – and she spent the next 20 minutes raving about how good it was. Honestly, he'd assumed she was trying to gas him up to make him feel better, until members of The Team started stopping by.

It started with Cassie, who he only let in because she was kind of cute. Was that weird, for him to think she was cute? He was her age, but then also he was eight years older than her, sooo he wasn't sure on that one. Didn't that technically make her jailbait? Either way, she had showed up – no doubt at Dinah's suggestion, he was sure – and demanded a tour of his apartment and a taste of his "famous" breakfast omelet. He gave her the food first and then didn't know whether or not to be proud of the copious amounts of praise she heaped on his cooking.

Bart Allen – the new Kid Flash, not that Roy had really met the first one – was next, though his opinion was invalid because speedsters would eat anything. After him came Beast Boy, whose eating habits were almost as nasty as Bart's. Then came the new Robin, some shy kid that seemed very different from the two or three times he remembered seeing the first Robin. Roy found out later that this was actually the third Robin, and while he ascertained from the hologram that Robin II was dead, no one would actually explain to him what happened to him. Meaning it was an ugly death.

So on and on it went, a new Team member stopping by to check in on the famous Roy and his omelets. Eventually, his clones stopped by. It was the first time all three were there in his apartment, and only the second time they had all been together, period. The conversation was awkward, forced, and they probably wouldn't have made any sort of headway if not for the fact that he was so unnerved by their presence he actually started a stovetop fire trying to cook breakfast for all of them. Somewhere between putting the fire out and ordering pizza they actually started talking to each other.

Eventually the clone Roy decided to change his name to Will while in the middle of eating one of his omelets for dinner. Jim told them about Geranium City and all the other genomes from Cadmus during his attempt at cooking omelets. The conversation that day was certainly better than the food. All three Harper men agreed to become brothers (legally and emotionally) during a dinner in which they had goaded Roy into making a pizza sized super spicy omelets.

It did not end well for any of them.

Lian loved his cooking too, even if she always made a mess out of it. He thought he wouldn't be able to be around her at first, because she was technically his daughter too. Will was his clone, which meant he was genetically identical to Roy. Which meant 50% of his DNA was in Lian. So if he had a daughter, there is a good chance she would look a lot like Lian.

It boggled his mind for a while. Hell, it still did, but when she took that first bite of his omelet and gave him that stupid little kid smile, he decided he was going to be the best damn uncle she ever had.

Definitely better than Jim. His omelets were shit.

**P is for Porcupine**

He figures that he really shouldn't have so many porcupine stories. He spent 8 years in a cryogenic pod, and in the years preceding and seceding that he lived in Star City, where porcupines were not native. Yet, Roy Harper still couldn't think of the large bristly haired rodent without shivers going up his back.

The first porcupine story came from when he was still living on the Navajo reservation at 8 years old. He had been learning how to hunt with a long bow, and the target of the day was a possum. He had been warned, multiple times not get close to the animal, but what did he do? He got close, and then he misjudged how fast it could move. For that he spent the rest of his afternoon pulling porcupine quills from his chest and the rest of the month getting laughed at by every elder on the reservation.

Then there was the porcupine from a few weeks after he took on the role of Speedy. He had gone golfing with Oliver – so really he'd been watching Oliver golf while he struggled to stay awake – and all of a sudden a porcupine came onto the middle of the green. The poor teenage country club employees were at a total loss for what to do, and one of them was a very attractive blonde, so Roy took it upon himself to remove the beast.

Acutely familiar with the pain of porcupine quills, he'd safely added multiple layers of clothing and gloves before grabbing the fat little rodent and escorting it to a waiting cage. The problem was, he'd started flirting with aforementioned blonde before properly getting the porcupine into the cage, and it slipped from his hands, jumped onto his shoulder, and somehow weaseled its way under his shirt.

He screamed so loud that Oliver had insisted his personal doctor check his throat tissue as well.

The latest porcupine story – two porcupine encounters later – occurred during the fateful mistake that was the 2018 Harper Brothers Camping expedition. It was a horrible experience from start to finish, mainly because none of the brothers wanted to do it: Jim was worried about Geranium City, Will about Lian, and Roy about general angst-y things.

So when he saw the porcupine in the center of the tent, he figured it would be a cruel but extremely fun joke to shove Will – who had memories of his previous porcupine perils – into Jim and towards the porcupine. Unfortunately, his bastard clone brother had the same idea only 0.5 seconds faster and shoved him forward. He wasn't sure whether it was the fact that the porcupine got to his face this time, or the sheer humiliation of Will & Jim laughing until they couldn't breathe, but this particular offense was one too many.

He couldn't let the rodent go unpunished.

That night, Roy learned what he would have learned at 8 years old had he listened to the hunting advice to keep his distance: Porcupines were tasty as hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dinah is the MVP of the Arrow family.


	8. Q – S (Dick)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I watched Under the Red Hood before I wrote this chapter and so naturally my angst-y anti-Batman feels seeped into this.

**Q is for Quagmire.**

A quagmire: "An awkward, complex, or hazardous situation."

Dick scoffed every-time that definition came up. It perfectly encapsulated what his life felt like so many times: just a complete mess of different situations. In a single day he would go from juggling his life as Dick Grayson to juggling his responsibilities to Bludhaven as Nightwing to handling his responsibility to the Team and the Outsiders. He could go from work to attending some ditzy Wayne Foundation gala event where he had to schmooze investors, avoid tabloid reporters, and make sure not to be pictures with some overly flirtatious bombshell to breaking up muggings or leading a Team mission later that night. It was getting to be so much that somedays he felt like he needed to clone himself so he could be in multiple places at once.

He doubted that would actually work. Two Dick Graysons would inevitably just double the workload on themselves, defeating the purpose of their existence.

Hell, even his love life was a quagmire: There was Zatanna, his first love. Young love was so innocent, but theirs was complicated by his responsibility to Batman, and to the secrets that meant he had to keep. Then there was Starfire, but neither of them had the commitment needed to maintaining their relationship [1]. It was followed by the on again/off-again thing with Barbara that he was _so scared_ to mess up now that they were finally in a good place. He still felt guilty that he hadn't been able to properly commit to her until after what the Joker did. The bastard.

The Joker was a quagmire in and of himself. The definition of a hazardous situation taken straight from the depths of hell.

But as much as his life felt like a quagmire, Dick excelled at creating and then navigating them when it came to fighting crime. Bad guys always underestimated him as Robin and never expected the amount of tricks he had up his sleeve: Hacking their comms and transmitting fake orders. Hijacking their escape vehicles, jerry-rigging their own weapons against them. These were things he kept up, and even perfected, as Nightwing.

Sometimes, these quagmires of his own creation grew out of his control. Things that were simple plans quickly spiraled into a web of lies and deceit, but he always found a way to reign them back in because that was what he did. It wasn't just Bruce's training that allowed him to do it either: His parents had taught him how to do it when practicing acrobatics in the air.

Yes, quagmires were tricky, but Dick knew that he had the genius and the agility to keep navigating them.

**R is for Robin**

Robin meant so much to him when he took up the mantle. It saved his life, gave him purpose after his parent's deaths. He grew up as a Robin, made his bones as a hero in the Robin costume. He'd made friends as Robin, joined the Team as Robin, and they all grew up together. Eventually, he outgrew Robin, and although he departed to Bludhaven on frosty terms with his adopted father, he'd left feeling secure about the legacy of Robin.

When he found out that there was a new Robin, operating side by side with Batman, him and Bruce had gone to blows.

"How the hell can you just give it to some street kid?!" he'd yelled, blood from Bruce's broken nose still on his fist.

He found out weeks later that Jason had heard their entire argument, eavesdropping in one of the many corners of the Batcave. Just like he had done so many times during his tenure at Robin. He felt bad, apologized, and put in a genuine effort to build a proper relationship. He wanted to make Jason feel like the two were something close to brothers.

Unfortunately, their relationship soured before it could ever reach that level.

Jason had seen things, experienced things as a child that made him feel the pain of the victims in a way that Bruce or Dick never could. It made him a loose cannon. Reckless. As Jason became more violent, his relationship with Dick deteriorated rapidly and with an alarming level of hostility.

"You dishonored the uniform" he'd told Jason one night, after he had to pull him off a rapist that he had beat into a coma. The rage emanating off the boy disturbed him to his core, and he left Bruce to handle it. It was the last time they spoke.

A few days later Alfred had called him, told him the news that Bruce was to broken to speak: Jason had died, tortured and killed at the hands of the Joker.

It was like a sucker punch that never stopped hurting.

Now there was a new Robin. This Robin was more reserved, strategic, less brash than Jason or Dick had ever been. He tried hard to be better to this Robin. To take him under his wing, and let him know he was welcome. To be the good big brother he'd failed to be for Jason.

He was there for him when Bruce was being emotionally distant – which was often – and when he was having nightmares about his dead parents – also often. He nurtured his hacking ability and was happy to see Tim surpass him in skill. He went to great lengths to make sure that he felt accepted by the Team and the Justice League, and made sure to stop by the Manor at all hours to check in on him.

He wonders how things may have been different if he tried to understand what Jason had been through before Bruce took him in, instead of just trying to ignore it.

"Just don't die," he told the new Robin before so many missions.

He often said it with a smile, because if he didn't smile he'd probably cry.

**S is for secrets.**

So many secrets. He was tired of keeping them. His secret identity. The secret about Artemis faking her death. Kaldur actually being a mole and working to avenge Tula. Keeping his own worries that Kaldur may have become a triple agent from Wally. Hiding how much Wally's death hurt him. Orchestrating the Outsiders, The Team, Batman Inc, and the Justice League to work together. Forcing Tim & Babs to keep secrets for him & Bruce.

With every lie, he lost a piece of himself, and he lost some of the trust of those who loved him.

_It's all for the sake of the mission_ he would tell himself, but it was a mantra that lost comfort over time. These days it was less comforting and more a reminder of something that he strove to avoid.

"I don't want to be the Batman," he once told Black Canary, all those years ago. The words clawed out of his throat, like an acid he had to get out of his system. When he actually said them, he'd felt a mixture of relief and horror at the words coming from his mouth.

He'd made sure Dinah hadn't written it down in any of her notes out of fear that one day Bruce would come combing through her files.

All these years later, he wasn't sure what scared him more: Becoming the Batman, or what would happen if he didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Starfire isn't mentioned in the YJ verse but I'm going to name drop her anyway because why not?


	9. T - W (Artemis)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that birthed this whole thing. Artemis was originally going to get all the letters, but then I had more fun doing multiple different characters. Still, this was my favorite chapter.

**T is for Trust**

Trust is fleeting, and dangerous. Trust, she had been told her entire childhood, was a weakness that would be used against you in every way, and one that you could use against the enemy. When you gave trust to others, it was only a matter time before it came back to haunt you.

She trusted Cameron as a child and they looked out for each other. Until he left with his father. He trusted her when he saw her in jail, looked out for her even, and she used that to get information from him. She heard about the prison beatings later from when Conner went back to make sure he got transferred to juvie, and tried to forget. She told herself that Cameron should have known better than to mouth off anyway.

She trusted Jade to watch out for her, and she left her alone with their father without so much as an offer to take her with. Now Jade trusted her to look out for Lian, because she didn't trust herself to. That was a trust Artemis knew she would never betray, because she couldn't hurt her niece. But everyday that Jade didn't come home was a day she spent feeding, clothing, and playing with Lian. A day raising a child with Will. She couldn't help but wonder if she was on the path to betraying a different kind of trust Jade had put in her.

"Your mother trusted me, and look at where that got her," her father had once muttered to her as he stitched up her arm after a rough night on the job. She never forgot the guilt and regret that filled his eyes, because it was a rare moment where her father was vulnerable.

She recognized that look in her own eyes when she was undercover as Tigress on Black Manta's sub. That was a mission where she broke everyone's trust: Her friends, her family, her own mother. The world taught her fast what that type of betrayal felt like.

She trusted Wally to come home, and he died.

**U is for Underdog**

She was an underdog her whole life. Her family wasn't poor, but they were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. They lived in a bad neighborhood of Gotham, a city that most people liked to think of as the bastard cousin of Metropolis. She was used to being treated like a 2nd class citizen.

When her mother when to jail and their father ratcheted up their training she was always second to Jade. The underdog in every fight, every training session, and every mission. Even when her sister left, her father never let her forget who came first. Her elder sister became the bogeyman she had to beat. It was the same when she first joined the team: They suspected her of being the mole. They preferred Red Arrow to her. She'd had to fight to prove them wrong and to show that she earned a seat at the table.

Villains doubted her too. Another archer? A girl? A young one too? Many even laughed when they saw her, even all these years later. Even as Tigress. She'd proven them wrong too, often with a painful exclamation point.

Over time Artemis realized that she liked being the underdog. Being underestimated. Having the odds stacked against her.

It made victory that much sweeter.

**V is for Vanilla**

Vanilla could mean two different things but Artemis always thought of the flavor first. She never liked chocolate, but she could make an exception for vanilla chocolate. Likewise, she also had a soft spot for vanilla ice cream and vanilla yogurt, even if neither were her favorites. To be honest, vanilla was never at the top of her lists of favorite flavors for really anything, but it was never at the bottom either.

The most interesting thing she ever learned about vanilla flavoring was when they were going over random facts Conner knew from his Cadmus "education." He told her that Vanilla actually came from a genus of orchids.

"Vanilla comes from the orchids of the genus Vanilla. Vanilla extract is made up of vanillin, an artificial derivative made as a by-product of the wood pulp industry."

She thought it was pretty funny then, that she resented the other definition of Vanilla: "Having no special or extra features; ordinary or standard."

It was an affront to everything she had ever striven for: In her academics she worked to be at the top of her class, even in subjects she hated or had to deal with Dick (during high school those two categories often overlapped). Before her hero days she worked hard to stand out in her fathers rigorous, borderline abusive training regimen. To be better than Cameron (she usually succeeded) and to outshine Jade (she usually failed).

Not that she was considered herself vain, but vanilla never even fit her physical description. She was a blonde but her skin tone expressed her Vietnamese heritage in a way that made her look more exotic than she would openly state. Her hair was unruly like her sisters, but she always managed to keep it under control. To be frank, she was beautiful, and she knew it.

Yet, there were moments when she felt herself doing things that could only be described as vanilla: When she would blow an entire afternoon scouting out a kindergarten for Lian to attend. Taking Violet and Tara shopping for clothes and sitting in on PTA meetings for them at school. Spending a weekend holed up in the library working on her masters thesis.

The thing was she didn't necessarily mind it either. There was something nice about doing normal, every people things, even if she couldn't imagine living a normal, everyday person life.

Artemis didn't consider herself vanilla by any means, but she had to admit that a little vanilla in her life was nice.

**W is for Wonderland.**

The first time she heard about Wonderland, she had been 7, and an 11 year old Jade was reading _Alice in Wonderland_ to her as a bed-time story. Even then Jade had a knack for theatrics and had done a marvelous job of imitating all the different voices throughout the book, keeping them both wholly entertained right to the very end.

When their parents would leave them alone for too long or the sounds of their crime infested neighborhood would keep them up at night, they made a game out of it. What would they do in wonderland? How would they change it? They would spend hours pondering the issue, going off on wild tangents, and letting themselves be absorbed into the imaginary world.

During one of their various adventures, they found an old abandoned warehouse a few blocks from their house. Slowly they started filling it with stuff: Toys, old couches, trinkets they found laying around the streets. They cleaned it up as much as two kids could, and they were proud of it.

"This is our wonderland," a 12-year old Jade had told her younger sister victoriously.

As fate would have it, Jade left a few days after some development company bought that warehouse and threw out everything they left in there. Their Wonderland was chained up, its contents taken by the vagrants of the street or ruined by the rain. When the realization that Jade wasn't coming back sunk in, Artemis realized that Wonderland was all hers in a horribly saddening way.

With time, Cameron weaseled his way into it, with his annoying jokes and insecurity and a heart that was far too warm for his father's liking. The boy kept insisting that Jack Frost not only belonged in Wonderland, but would practically rule the domain. He replaced Jade in spending those long nights – now more frequent in her mother's absence – venturing in the never ending abyss that was Wonderland. What he lacked in Jade's theatrical ability, he more than made up for with a vivid imagination and penchant for arguing over the most pointless details.

Eventually he too left, leaving Artemis alone with her father. Then her mother came home and kicked him out, and before she knew it Artemis became Artemis the hero. Fighting bad guys, getting mentored by Green Arrow himself, and thoroughly repudiating everything that life had seemed to want to turn her into. She found herself thinking about Wonderland less and less often than ever before.

It jarred her when she found out that Cheshire was Jade, but in a way she understood: Jade had found a way to evolve her wonderland so that a piece of it stayed with her. Cheshire protected her. Artemis didn't need that: She had the Team, she had her mother, and she had Wally.

All these years later, two of those three were still true, and Artemis was no longer a little girl anymore. Now there were kids that looked up to her as a mentor, and in the case of Lian, as a mother-figure. She couldn't get lost in the world of imagination. But some nights, before she fell asleep, she still let her mind wander. To a happy place tinged with snowflakes and a redhead-shaped blur that never stopped moving and a Cheshire cat that smiled but laughed a lot like Jade did when she was still a kid.

She didn't mind those nights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artemis is a BAMF.


	10. X – Z (Zatanna)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zatanna has gone through a lot in the background of the YJ universe.

**X is for Xylograph**

As far as house art went, xylographs were fairly uncommon in the Western Hemisphere but Zatanna thought the beautiful wooden engravings were some of the best pieces of art in existence. She believed their rarity only added to their beauty. Whenever she thought of that particular type of art, there were three different pieces that would come to mind.

The first belonged to her mother: It was an anniversary gift from her father, for the last anniversary they had celebrated before her death. It was beautiful and was proudly displayed over the fireplace of Zatanna's childhood home. Zatara never moved it after his wife's death and neither had Zatanna when, for all intents and purposes, she had become the sole occupant of the home.

The second Dick had given her as a present for her sixteenth birthday: He spent weeks meticulously carving an intricate pattern weaving around the phrase "thiglt a eB" into a small slab of butternut. _Be a light._ She had to admit, the actual art wasn't the best work she'd seen, but it was a sweet gesture and pretty superb work for a beginner. She kept it hanging on her wall even after they broke up, because the sentiment remained.

The third one she'd bought herself: It was a going away present for Artemis's retirement from The Team as well as a housewarming gift for her new place in Palo Alto with Wally. (That last part was told with a lot of snickering and innuendos). It was a beautiful wooden engraving of the goddess Artemis that she spotted during a mission in Cambodia. Sure it was a bit on the nose, but a proper artwork of a Greek Goddess in a Cambodian marketplace bought by an Italian magician was about as unique as Artemis herself.

Three different pieces, associated with some of the most important people in her life.

**Y is for Youth**

"Youth is wasted on the young." Or so the saying went.

She realized she was starting to get old when she first caught herself muttering the saying, after a particularly mind-numbing conversation with Bart & Cassie. She'd almost wrung her top-hat trying to explain to the two of them why it was completely irresponsible to take the BioShip on an unauthorized joyride to go fraternize with fans of The Outsiders. At the Santa Monica Pier. With paparazzi present. All night.

"Thanks for doing my job," laughed Black Canary when Zatanna was done telling the two teens off. "Now you know how I felt during my years as Den Mother."

Zatanna would have had a quick retort defending her team's maturity if she hadn't been so busy looking for grey hairs. With almost a decade of heroic antics under her belt, she was starting to feel the full brunt of her twenty-something years of age. Rather than feel her youth, she was starting to see it all around her.

She saw it in Traci, who she taken on as her unofficial protégé. The young girl was bursting with untapped potential, but she was shy and unsure of herself. Zatanna wondered sometimes if she would have felt the same if she hadn't had such an experienced magician for a father. Traci's relationship with Jaime seemed to only make things more complicated, meaning Zatanna often found herself dispelling more motherly-esque dating advice than she felt qualified to give.

Of course there was the previously mentioned Bart and Cassie, both powerful and with a tendency to be reckless. Cissie took up the spot of the snarky archer and Violet was like a Megan 2.0, given how much she had to learn about being a normal teenager. It was eery, actually, how much the "youth" reminded Zatanna of the original Team from a few years back.

Despite all that, there were still times when Zatanna felt the full brunt of her youth.

Anytime she was around John Constantine, with his permanent five o'clock shadow and haunted eyes, she was painfully aware of how young and relatively innocent she was. The man walked like he saw demons everywhere – probably because he did – but he was one of the few people her father trusted, which meant she trusted him as well. She felt her youth whenever she messed up a spell in front other members of the Justice League, especially those with a hand in the mystic elements. Or whenever she caught them giving her sympathetic glances when Nabu was around the Watchtower, masquerading in her father's body. She felt her youth when she got really sick from a flu or over-exerting her magical powers and she would mope around her house half dead while and Artemis or Dinah or Raquel or all of the above doted on her until she felt better.

She never did feel just how young she was as much as during the sixty minutes a year that she had with her father. During those precious few minutes, she felt like a little girl all over again. When it ended, she felt aged beyond imagination.

**Z is for Zatara**

There was something about a last name. It defined more than just who your parents were, especially for those who were practitioners of the mystic arts. For them, a last name defined who you were and what characteristics were associated with your person. Zatanna Zatara knew from a young age what characteristics were associated with her last name, and she cherished them.

First of all, a Zatara was noble.

" _Noblesse Oblige,_ " her father had informed her. "Nobility demands you be noble, and you are a Zatara. Your lineage is that of the most noble practitioners of not just the mystic arts, but the sciences as well. From our ancestors include the likes of Nostradamus and Leonardo da Vinci, some of the greatest minds to walk this planet."

Of course, Nabu had since stolen her father from her and held him hostage for eight, going on nine years now. It was a mockery of justice, and yet he stood among the earth's mightiest heroes. Even though she knew it was at her father's behest, it didn't change the hatred she felt anytime she saw the Lord of Order in the Watchtower, seated at the table with the other heroes. It was the nobility that ran through her blood that stopped her from yelling that a Lord of Order did not mean a Lord of _Good_ and forced her to keep her composure.

Second of all, a Zatara didn't just excel in magic. They became one with it.

Her father was one of the most renown magicians in the world and with his absence someone had to fill the void. So she trained in the magical arts endlessly, poring over her father's library of incantations and devoting almost every waking moment of her free time training on increasing her mystic strength. She even found John Constantine and forced herself to deal with his self-destructive tendencies because the semi-alcoholic Aussie was one of the few people who could help her navigate the twisted halls of dark magic. Zatanna was a practitioner of magic, she was an extension of it.

A Zatara _never_ abandoned their family.

The Team had become her family, and she stood by them through thick and thin much like they had with her. It was why she was able to forgive Artemis, Kaldur, and Dick – even though Dick was harder to forgive than the other two – after the events of the Reach invasion. And then forgive them again when the collusion between the Outsiders. Batman Inc, and the Justice League was revealed again. It was why she never lost touch with the original members of The Team even as they all grew up and went their separate ways, be it to the Justice League or "retirement" (because that never lasted long).

It was why she knew that she was going to free her father from Nabu. Going after a Lord of Order was a dangerous undertaking, one where even success could have far reaching negative outcomes on the magical realm. Even more dangerous when said Lord of Order was slowly but surely becoming suspicious of your growing power and rapidly expanding inventory of mystic artifacts. Despite all that, she had faith that the when, where, and how would all fall into place soon enough.

Because she was a Zatara.

*****END*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we are. Thanks to anyone who left a kudos or a comment (these make my day!) and I hope you all enjoyed reading this.


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